How Does One Figure Out The Absolute Minimal Serving Size of Fruits and Vegetables?

V

vanzandt

I'm sure many of you have seen the commercials lately for the "Balance of Nature" capsules.
Apparently it's pretty good stuff. If you read the reviews and testimonies on various websites, they're pretty convincing.

I read up on it and this guy basically dehydrates fruits and vegetables, grinds them into powder, capsulizes them,... and there you go. No magic, no hidden formulas.Pretty simple really. $69.95/month. I'm sure he's making a fortune. Folks across the country are swearing they work. Who knows...

Now... my question here is NOT about this product, it has nothing to do with B.O.N., I throw that in because I don't want the thread turning into a debate about these types of products.
My question is about real food. The B.O.N. thing ties into it however... in a way. I'll get to that part in a second.

We all know there are some really good fruits and vegetables that allegedly have remarkable affects on our bodies. Beets, blueberries, carrots, fresh spinach, etc. My question is, where can I find the information needed to determine the absolute minimum needed to get the daily benefits?

Lets take blueberries as an example. Now I can eat a whole $5 container of these things like it was small bag of popcorn. I'm sure, aside from the fact that I love them, there exists a point from a nutritional aspect.. where each additional blueberry has no additional daily health benefit for me, and I would like to figure that quantity out for all of the "super-vegetables".
I don't want to have to eat an entire raw beet/day, if I get the same benefits from say a tiny sliver.

How do I figure that out? I did searches, basically its all the same stuff we've heard all our lives... blah blah blah... "you need 3 servings/day" or whatever. That's not the right answer, I want a chemical answer.

I brought up the B.O.N. product because think about it... I don't care how great of quantity this company is purchasing their raw ingredients in, the #'s don't add up.
No way he's getting fresh fruits and vegetables for 1/100th of the cost we pay.

At $69/jar... per month retail... after he pays for processing, packaging, shipping, advertising, lights, etc... I bet his actual cost of ingredients is less than $10/ jar. Tops.

So $0.33/day worth of real fruits and vegetables?
Whatever. If they work, well then we don't need that much of the real stuff to get the desired benefits because dehydrated or not... this product can't have much based on a cost to him of say $0.33. Or whatever it is. $1... who cares. You see my point here.
It circles back to my question.

How do I figure out the absolute bare minimum quantity of any desirable food, it could even be fish.. from a chemical standpoint, where additional quantities are overkill and not required?
 
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vanzandt said:
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How do I figure out the absolute bare minimum quantity of any desirable food, it could even be fish.. from a chemical standpoint, where additional quantities are overkill and not required?
More...

That is an interesting question.

"...basically its all the same stuff we've heard all our lives... blah blah blah... "you need 3 servings/day" or whatever. That's not the right answer, I want a chemical answer..."

Does it break down to that "servings per day" stuff? What does the FDA consider a "serving of fish", and what are they including in that serving? Protein count? I.U. of minerals? Amount of fiber? blah blah blah.

When you talk about the max benefits from the least amount of a fruit or vegetable, like a blueberry, and compare that to that same concentrate of blueberry content from a pill, and what the min/max is, I am guessing there are other concerns that are forgotten about.

Such as the fact that a blueberry delivers a lot of it's nutrients from the flesh of the berry, and not just the chemically-extracted vitamins and minerals in pill form. That fiber from the fruit is important.

In the end, all these pills should be considered supplements to a healthy diet, not a replacement for it.

As for overkill? I believe the only thing you can go overboard with considering natural foods are the fat-soluble vitamins. You can OD the hell out of Vitamin C. Any of that your body does not consume is just flushed naturally out of your system. But some of the B complex you can gather too much of because they be fat-soluble and build up in your tissues, and it can become a long-term health problem.
 
Well, the short answer is, there is really no such a thing. The long answer is, that the daily recommended dose is kinda BS, for vitamins and supplements. So if you are trying to calculate a fruit's daily serving size based on its vitamin content, your calculation will be based on bad data.

I think technically the recommended daily value of a vitamin is based on a volume what when taken doesn't lead to insufficiency. But let's take a look at potassium for example. The DV is 4700 mg. Once you look at foods' potassium content you realize pretty much NOBODY is eating that much. A banana has 420 mg potassium (very high) and who the fuck eats 11 bananas every day? Not even a chimpanzee. So obviously the DV of potassium should be around 2000 mg or even less.

Not to mention that a 250 lbs man working a physically demanding job has a different DV needs than a 110 lbs secretary.

Once we realize that DVs are bullshit, we can stop worrying about just how much fruit we should be eating. There is a simple way to tell if you are not getting enough vit C though. If your tooth is falling out, you should eat a lemon once in a while... :)
 
Perhaps you should look at it another way. Instead of asking how much of something good you should eat, perhaps you should ask yourself how little of everything else you should have. If you cut out or at least minimize the bad, processed carbs, sugars, and saturated fats, then how much of the good stuff will you have to eat to feel sated? I think the idea is to eat a variety of vegetables and fruit and not get too formulaic about it. And I'd leave the powders to the get-thin-quick crowd, who tend to flame out anyway.
 
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